Victims of the Sands
by FunkEngine
Summary: A story of horror and survival in a city cursed by the Sands of Time.
1. The Curse

Just a couple notes: One, on just what this is about, I'm a big fan of the game Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, but I was always curious what effects the Sands had on events outside the palace. So, this is a story, no idea how long yet, about a village affected by the Sand's curse. Second, for legal mumbo jumbo, Prince of Persia is the property of Jordan Mechner, Ubisoft Montreal, and SCEJ. All characters and plot devices, aside from those created by me, are property of the above listed people/companies. I'm not getting paid (hah!) for any of this, so please don't sue me. Thank you.

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**Victims of the Sands  
Chapter 1: The Curse**

It all started, and ended, in an instant. The sudden wind, the sting of sand against ruddy cheeks, then nothing. Blackness. He was no one. He was nothing. Or was he? A memory, a thought, came back. A dimly-lit face, smiling at him from across the street, an image symbolizing warmth and safety. It seemed forever ago, yet he knew that it was not. He then realized that he must be something, for nothing could not remember. Feeling as if the simple act would drain him completely, he opened his eyes.

He was not nothing, he was Shak. He was Shak, son of Kazh. He was Shak, the begger. He was Shak, the street-rat. However, upon opening his eyes, he came to wish that he could become nothing again. All around him, in the empty streets, chaos ruled. What had been a lazy evening in the bazaar had in the course of an instant been transformed into a nightmare. Where a crowd of people had stood but moments ago, now there lurched a mob of terrifying creatures. The people- men, women, and children- had been warped, twisted, and perverted. Their eyes glowed with a sickly inner flame, there skin was twisted and warped beneath a fine layer of sand. Their limbs had elongated, their hands turned to claws, and their mouths widened and filled with fangs. Awful as this sight was, worse was that at their feet. A safe assumption would be that some lucky souls had been spared these miserable wretches' fate, only to have their luck turn sour quickly. The bodies were hacked and mangled, and if the number of creatures were great, greater still were their victims. People surged through the streets, trying to escape the mob, but the streets were crowded and the creatures followed relentlessly, cutting a swath through the panicked throngs.

Shak sat for quite a while, paralyzed with terror more profound than he thought he would ever experience. The creatures did not seem to notice him, instead chasing down the fleeing survivors. He gazed about himself, terrified, his eyes seeking something familiar, something tangible he could anchor himself to amid the chaos. He found it, but not as he had wished. The face, from a memory that seemed so distant now, lay across the street. Her eyes saw nothing, her hands- hands that had so often offered Shak a cup of water or a reassuring hug- lay limp by her sides in a widening pool of blood.

The next thing he knew, he was screaming. He knew he should not, knew that to do so would likely alert those creatures still shambling about the area, but he simply could not hold it in. No words came from his mouth; nothing decipherable, at any rate. The eyes of three sand creatures near Shak turned, centering on him. His hysterics died down and he groped by his side, look for something, anything, to ward off the beasts now advancing on him. He leaped up from the ground as the monsters neared, flailing wildly with a wooden pole, likely part of one of the ruined kiosks that littered the streets. He bashed each creature about the head and neck, but for all the noticeable damage he did, he may as well have been brandishing a twig. The creatures kept straight on, ignoring the hits, until in desperation Shak swung low, at the legs of the creature to his left.

Down the monster toppled, and Shak didn't wait for it to right itself. He leaped over the prone form, hurtling down the street as quickly as he ever had. He heard the footsteps of the beasts behind him, saw several in the streets and alleyways he passed, but he simply kept running; he didn't know what else to do. He passed many possible hiding places, but none to which he would trust his life. Finally, salvation appeared. He spied an old shed, low to the ground, with piled boxes atop it leading onto the roofs of the houses. He ran, leaped, climbed, and grappled his way to the top, then took care to kick the boxes to the alley floor. He doubted the creatures could climb, but didn't want to take any risks.

Safely atop the houses of the city, Shak could finally think; however, there was little to make sense of in this world gone mad. He looked out, to the east, where the Palace of Azad stood proudly silhouetted against the moon. He looked to the west, to the vast expanse of desert. He looked up, to the stars, if only because he refused to look down. He knew what he would see, knew the horrors occurring in the streets beneath him, and had seen enough of that in his mad dash away from the creatures. However, he could not block out the screams, and he knew that the noises of horror he heard that night would stay with him for the rest of his life.


	2. All for a Loaf of Bread

Just a couple notes: One, on just what this is about, I'm a big fan of the game Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, but I was always curious what effects the Sands had on events outside the palace. So, this is a story, no idea how long yet, about a village affected by the Sand's curse. Second, for legal mumbo jumbo, Prince of Persia is the property of Jordan Mechner, Ubisoft Montreal, and SCEJ. All characters and plot devices, aside from those created by me, are property of the above listed people/companies. I'm not getting paid (hah!) for any of this, so please don't sue me. Thank you.

* * *

**Victims of the Sand:  
Chapter 2: All for a Loaf of Bread**

Shak's eyes flew wide as the first rays of sun touched his face. He had not been aware of falling asleep, had been doing all he could to keep himself awake through that awful night, for he feared that dreaming would only bring nightmares worse than those that had so suddenly become his reality. Now, despite his rest, he stood on the roof and felt exhausted, mentally drained from the horrible night before.

Something he sensed then caused him an instant of sheer terror. He could not place what it was at first, and try as he might, he could hear nothing that may have startled him. Then he placed it: he could hear nothing. The previous night had been of screams of horror, yelps of agony, and the growls of the hunting beasts. Now, however, there was no sound. None. Even the wind that blew through the city constantly, carrying it's heat and sand, seemed abnormally still and silent.

Shak stood up and inspected himself. His clothing was tattered, though that was the norm, truly. He didn't seem injured, hadn't hurt himself in his dash to relative safety, and for that he was glad. He looked at his arm and noticed a fine layer of sand covering the back of his left hand. At first he paid it no heed, but he suddenly realized that it was spreading, growing, reaching to cover his hand completely. Startled, and remembering the sand that coated the bodies of those possessed, Shak went into a frenzy, slapping the sand away, scraping it with his finger nails, anything to rid himself of the wretched parasite. He was clean quickly, and made a mental note to watch for any more of the evil stuff on his body. He noticed motes of sand seeming suspended in the air, catching the dawn's light in a deceptively alluring manner.

Shak then realized something else: he was hungry. More than that, he was starving. His first thought was to head to the bazaar, to swipe a loaf from one particularly lenient seller, but his memories of last night's disasters came hurtling back to crush that thought. Tentatively, Shak moved to the edge of the roof, to see what dawn had to show of the city and ponder his next move.

Shak quickly stepped back, his heart pounding fit to burst. Standing below his sanctuary was a mob of the fearsome sand creatures. If they had been frightening in the darkness, they were horrifying in daylight. The tears and stretch-marks in their pallid, sand-covered skin were gruesome and detailed in the early morning light. The claws that had been hands dripped a steady stream of a darker, foul looking sand. Worse still were the faces; despite the sand and distortion, he recognized more than a few of the creatures looking up at him, creatures who, until last night, had been his friends and family. The monsters made no aggressive moves, none of them shuffled towards the crates that had allowed Shak his sanctuary. They just stood, staring upwards with those awful, smoldering eyes, watching the house that had become to Shak a single safe island among a deadly sea.

Shak looked about himself, looking for some way for him to escape, to get away from these foul creatures and their hungry stares. He noticed a roof off to his left, over a narrow alley, that was close enough for him to leap to, but that was all he could see. For all he knew, that building would be just as isolated as this, but he had nothing to lose at this point, so he ran to the edge of the roof and leaped off, arms windmilling and legs pumping in the air.

He hit the roof harder than he would have liked, but grunted through the light pain in his ankles and kept on running, making sure to avoid the motes of sand that floated in the air. He realized that he was now on a block of houses that extended about 100 meters into the city, towards the bazaar, and decided to try and find some food among the wreckage. He heard the creatures that had been surrounding his previous hide-out, shuffling after him in the streets, but they were slower than he and he quickly outpaced them. He had to watch his step, however, and once or twice he nearly fell through a hole in the roof of the more ramshackle houses, something that would surely have lead to a quick death. He came to the end of his block and quickly veered left, leaping over another alleyway and landing atop another row of homes. He marveled at how quickly his body had learned, for this time he did not land clumsily and roughly, but managed to keep his balance and land in full stride. The sounds of pursuit behind him grew quieter and quieter, and he found himself immersed in silence, aside from his own breathing and the sound of his feet on the shingles.

Shak reached the end of this row of houses and stopped dead, bile rising in his throat. He had reached the bazaar, and the scene before him brought memories of the previous night rushing back even more powerfully. The entire place was destroyed, ruined kiosks and their merchandise scattered everywhere. Among the wreckage were the bodies, hacked and mangled, their wounds festering and coated in the same dark sand that covered the sand creatures' claws. Already the carrion birds circled over head, coming ever lower to sample the catch. What surprised Shak, however, was that none of the bodies had been damaged beyond the wounds that felled them. They were not whole, not by a long shot, but had not been eaten by the monsters and hadn't been taken anywhere.

No longer hearing the shambling approach of the creatures behind him, Shak quickly dropped to the ground and went to the rubble, trying to keep a wide berth from the bodies of the dead. He worked quickly, not knowing how long he had before the creatures caught up to him, but his search for a long while was fruitless. Finally, however, he found a loaf of bread, dusty but unharmed, in a corner of the market. He took it under his arm and hurried across the way, to another pile of crates that would allow him access back to the safety of the rooftops.

Shak was almost there, could feel the security of height around him and the feel of bread in his empty stomach, when something went wrong. He suddenly stumbled, his foot catching on something, and he fell headlong into the dirt. He turned around him and saw that he had tripped over the body of a man, lying face down in the rubble. Shak stood and was about to continue on his way, when the body shifted. Shak noticed then that the dark sand covering the man's deep wounds had spread, had covered almost all of his body, and the man stood, his eyes smoldering with the same yellow light as those of the creatures.

Shak screamed and took off running, hoping against the odds that he could reach the roofs. However, all about him, the victims of last night's massacre were rising up, taking on the forms of their murderers. The closed about Shak, one of them reaching out almost close enough to grab his shoulder.

An arrow suddenly appeared, quivering in the creatures face. It gave an unearthly shriek and fell backwards a step, allowing Shak to gain some needed distance. However, the beast was far from defeated and quickly took up the chase again. The diversion had worked, though, and Shak was now halfway up the boxes leading to sanctuary. He gave one last great leap, landed on the roof, and collapsed, cradling the bread that had almost lead to his death as though it were his only child. Over a rise on the next house, there suddenly came the figure of a man. Not a creature, but a man, one of living flesh and blood. Shak stared, amazed and happy that he was no longer alone, that another human had survived the awful night.

As the man neared, a small smile creased his wrinkled and bearded face, and though he was not young, his voice was strong as he called out, "You wouldn't be opposed to sharing, would you, boy?"


End file.
